Chief Justice asks all judges, employees not to leave stations

The Chief Justice has asked the all the judges and judiciary employees not to leave their respective work stations during the public holidays announced to prevent community transmission of coronavirus (COVID-19), Supreme Court’s spokesman Mohammad Saifur Rahman told New Age Saturday.

‘All are asked to stay at home at their respective stations to provide emergency assistance, if required, to prevent outbreak of coronavirus,’ said a circular issued by High Court’s deputy registrar for administration and judiciary Mohammad Akhteruzzaman Bhuiyan on Wednesday.

Saifur Rahman said that only assigned metropolitan magistrates or judicial magistrates were asked to attend their offices by rotation.

The circular came after the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research director Meerjady Sabrina Flora at an online press conference on March 24, asked people, who had left the capital, to remain in home quarantine as community transmission of novel coronavirus was occurring in the country.

Community transmission of coronavirus is feared as thousands of people including public servants left their work stations as the government on March 23 announced a 10-day public holiday from March 26 to ensure social distance to prevent coronavirus infections.

According to the World Health Organisation definition, community transmission of the novel coronavirus ‘is evidenced by the inability to relate confirmed cases through chains of transmission for a large number of cases, or by increasing positive tests through sentinel samples’.

The IEDCR, the government’s disease monitoring arm, earlier denied that community transmission of COVID-19 occurred saying that it could not be established yet while public health experts disagreed. (Source: New Age)